Blame
by dani2theela
Summary: The night after Teyla's abduction, Evan can't sleep. This plays right after the episode The Kindred Pt.1. Established Lorne/OC-relationship. #3 in the Non Resident Indian-series.


It is the night after Teyla's abduction. I can't sleep. Everytime I close my eyes I see her being scooped up by the dart. I see her in a cell she's been thrown in, waiting to be fed on. I'm afraid of falling asleep because I know there'll be nightmares. And on top of all of it, I blame myself even though I was assured that there was nothing I could've done. Still, she was under my protection and I let her down.

I'm standing in my bathroom, looking into the mirror, my hands gripping the edges of the sink.

Suddenly, I feel arms wrapped around my body, slowly reaching around until a small body is pressed against my back. I can feel her head leaning against my spine, her hair tickling the skin on my back. I look to the side and see her looking at me. She looks concerned and I can't blame her.

"Whats wrong?"

"Nothing", I lie.

I don't really make an effort to make it sound like a good lie. She's good at reading people, at reading me.

"Liar", she says, but she doesn't sound offended, it's like she expected me to say it.

I sigh deeply, but don't say anything.

"It's because of Teyla, isn't it?"

"Yes."

She lets go of me and I see it as a cue for me to turn around to look at her. Maybe because she wants to see my face instead of talking to my back, maybe because she wants to look me in the eyes when she's lecturing me again about how much I could've prevented Teyla's abduction.

So I turn and wait for her to say something. But she doesn't. Instead, she just looks at me, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

"I didn't wanna wake you up, I'm sorry", I apologize eventually.

"You didn't", she shrugs.

"Liar", I quote her and find that we do that a lot. Quote each other, I mean. I like to believe it's our thing, our own little personal trade mark of sorts.

"I could practically hear the wheels in your head turning", she answers, "going through the scenario over and over again, trying to find something that could've averted the whole situation, when all you really do is continuing to blame yourself. You don't give yourself the chance to say 'maybe there's nothing I could've done', because there is nothing you could've done. Whoever did this put a lot of effort in it to make it work and you know it. Don't be so hard on yourself."

"It's what I'm trained to do: finding solutions to a problem, going through situations that went bad over and over again to find out what went wrong, to be more careful next time a similar situation occurs."

"It'll only make it worse, not better."

"It's not supposed to make me feel better. It's supposed to make me more alert."

She doesn't reply. Again, she just looks at me, but her expression changes. I can't quite read it. Pity? Compassion? And then she lowers her eyes, signaling me that she's giving up, that anything that she has on her mind right now wouldn't change my mind. She knows when to withdraw, to just let it go when all she wants is to keep discussing the issue. It's something I admire about her, the intuition to know when the conversation hit a dead end. She accepts the values I live for, doesn't want to change or lecture me or try to alter my opinion. She walks towards me and wraps her arms around my waist.

"Just promise me one thing", she says and looks up, her chin resting on my chest.

I return the gesture and hold her close to me. "What's that?"

"Don't beat yourself up over it. You're one of the best here on Atlantis, in fact, you're right up there with Sheppard. You're an amazing man and I would hate to see you suffer from your own values and military standards."

I lean down and kiss her slowly. She doesn't seem to see it as an answer because she breaks the kiss and says, "or I will beat you up."

This makes me smile immediately. I don't laugh, because there's that seriousness in her tone and I know that her training with Ronon has improved her hand-to-hand combat skills. She could hold herself against a Marine (not _win_, just _keeping herself in the ring long enough to kick his ass and then eventually end up loosing after the first round_).

"I promise", I say and kiss her again.

This time, it's the answer she was looking for.


End file.
